Red Cliff (2008)
Directed by John Woo
In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance.
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What critics compared Red Cliff to
Armies swoop towards one another across a vast plain, each group displaying their own intricate maneuvers and battle strategies, wielding their own specific weaponry, making one think it could be a deleted scene from John Woo's "Red Cliff," or that a fussy Middle Earth equivalent of John Keegan had been a consultant on the film, providing information on how the dwarf infantry worked, and how the elves moved in formation.
Tim Burton's approach to Alice in Wonderland is reflective of the approaches taken with the recent Chinese "Three Kingdoms" movies -- such as John Woo's Red Cliff -- in that the directors appear to be interested in telling a story that really has nothing to do with the material they are adapting.
As I sat there trying to keep myself awake and watching thousands of CG arrows soar across the screen, I couldn't help thinking of John Woo's Red Cliff, with its beautifully clear, rousing battle sequences.
Though the wuxia choreography is never as fluid as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the epic battle scenes pale in comparison to something like Red Cliff , it is already a pleasant surprise to me that Disney even embraced this direction in the first place.
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Woo’s orchestration of the climactic scenes are about as stunning as any I have seen in this genre and make its Hollywood counterparts such as Wolfgang Petersen’s “Troy” look trivial by comparison.
For the last decade, the action genre has been divided into four distinct sub categories: the superhero movie (The Avengers, The Dark Knight), the “geriatrics with guns” movie (The Expendables, Taken), the arty martial arts movie (The Grandmaster, Red Cliff) and the ever popular shaky cam thriller (The Bourne movies, Safe House).